On Moving On
by Sarah1281
Summary: Post-war. Cassie on moving on and the bridges that must be burned in order to do so. Save Rachel, they all survive physically but for some it didn't go much further than that.


On Moving On

Disclaimer: I do not own Animorphs.

Sometimes I wonder if I have survivor's guilt or merely guilt for not having it.

Back during the war we pretty much had to deal with our own issues or go to each other for any advice we needed. Sometimes I went to Jake but more often than not it was everyone else coming to me. More often than not I tried to solve my own problems. I knew that I 'couldn't toss a stone without hitting three moral dilemmas', as Marco had put it once, and I knew that it made the others uncomfortable.

It wasn't like they couldn't see the ethical dilemmas, they just often chose not to. I can understand that, of course. If they were going to have to do something anyway then not thinking about just why it should never be done was only going to make it that much harder to live with yourself. Ignoring a problem is easier than coming up with moral justifications for it or, worse, accepting that it's wrong but that it's still going to happen.

I've done my share of the latter two but I never could bring myself to ignore morality for long. It would make my life a lot simpler if I wasn't the type of person to angst over killing a termite queen and thus dooming the entire colony (even before I became an Animorph, come to think of it) but that just wasn't me.

It might have been harder and just looked more desperate to cling to any semblance of morality by the end of the war but there were some lines I could not bring myself to cross and giving up on lines in general to make it a no-holds-barred fight was one of them. I thank God every day that my refusal (or was it inability? I can never quite be sure) to become Marco or Rachel or Jake didn't end up costing humanity far more than my soul was worth.

So, again, back then when the war was slowly changing me into a different person, into a more apathetic, more harsh, less human person…I was largely on my own. The others would have listened if I'd gone to them (yes, even Marco) but I couldn't bear to burden them with my own issues when they already had so many of their own to deal with.

Survivor's guilt was a condition I heard of early on and it stuck with me because I'd always wondered if I'd live long enough to experience it. Against all odds, I've lived long enough that I could have experienced it by now but I'm not entirely sure if I have.

"Survivors guilt is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives himself to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not. It may be found among survivors of combat, natural disasters, epidemics, among the friends and family of those who have committed suicide, and in non-mortal situations among those whose colleagues are laid off."

I've survived a traumatic event, all right. In fact, there were points in the war where I was surviving one every day. I guess you could call the entire war one big traumatic experience but somehow that doesn't seem quite adequate for the hell that it was.

I survived the war when others did not. I survived physically, mentally, and spiritually.

There were so many anonymous victims in the war. Some I killed, many more that I didn't. Some I knew well, others I had never seen before, and still others who I could pick out of a crowd but had never been close to.

The very first man I had ever killed was a cop by the name of Officer Martin. I don't really think of myself as a cop-killer and neither does anybody else – whatever else they may think of me – but technically I suppose I am. He wasn't killed in the line of duty or anything and it wasn't even him that I really needed to die. He was a Controller, you see, and he wasn't just a threat to us. He was our certain doom.

It was my fault, you see. Jake had said that he'd be fine sneaking off to spy on the Yeerk meeting but I knew his brother was back there and Jake wouldn't like what he'd hear and…I don't know, I was concerned. I wanted to be there and I knew that I couldn't so it was a compromise of sorts. Unfortunately it didn't work quite as planned and the cop from earlier who had already been suspicious of me since he'd showed up as I was in the middle of demorphing spotted me snooping around. He'd kidnapped me and dragged me to the Yeerk pool.

If my friends hadn't shown up, I'd have been infested for sure. Since they had, I was temporarily safe but I'd always be in danger as long as Officer Martin lived. See, even if I hadn't been even remotely suspicious of the Sharing or knew anything incriminating at all, once I'd been to the Yeerk Pool I'd seen too much. If I turned up without a Yeerk in my head then Officer Martin would just try again. It was him or me. Him or my friends. Him or my people. Even so, it wasn't an easy decision. I didn't even know his name at the time I killed him but I made a point to find out afterwards.

My first kill wasn't as difficult as I'd expected it to be physically but emotionally…I hadn't wanted to kill, not at all. There was a reason the best morph I'd had down there was a horse. Strictly speaking, I hadn't been the one to kill the man. I had merely given him enough injuries to excite the Taxxons. It was still my fault. If I had just been more careful, less stupid then none of it would have happened. Officer Martin wouldn't have needed to die and leave three children fatherless and he might even still be alive today.

Flash-forward three years and I had changed quite a bit. That was perhaps the most jarring part of bringing my parents in on the secret. I looked at their moral objections and couldn't believe that they couldn't see the bigger picture, couldn't see that it was all well and good that Hork-Bajir need space to live happy and fulfilling lives but if they were under siege they had bigger problems. It made me realize just how much I had changed in the last three years despite my best efforts to pretend I was still the Cassie who went into the construction site that night. It made me wonder if that was what it was like for the others to deal with me all those years.

But the war is over and I survived when so many people didn't.

Rachel didn't survive this war at all. I don't know how well she would have done had she physically survived given that every day it seemed she was inching closer to the edge but I'll never know because she didn't. Rachel died a hero, though, died saving all of us. When I was dispatched to tell Erek to make himself scarce, Jake said that Rachel had died in vain but I'll never believe that and not just because it would be too painful.

Tom – or rather, his Yeerk – was going to kill us. He was even more set on killing us when he saw that Jake was alive. Rachel killed both cousin and Yeerk and then the Yeerks left without harming us. Rachel saved our lives and through that she saved the world from the trigger-happy Andalites. I'd rather have a live best friend than a dead hero but if she must be dead, I guess that was a good way to go. So many deaths don't have meaning and Rachel's was one of the most important in the war, right up there with Elfangor's.

Tom died, too. His death pretty much destroyed Jake's reason for getting involved in the first place and, given that Jake had been the one to decide that we all were fighting, ours as well. I had never known him that well but now I wish I did. Rachel's death hurt more but I think his was more tragic. It wasn't his fault he died and he wasn't the target. He was collateral damage, I suppose, and he died a slave.

Jara Hamee was killed. The father of his people and Toby's father didn't live through the battle to take the Pool Ship. His side won but that's hardly much of a consolation, is it? He died defending freedom, though, and if he must die that was a good death, too.

Those seventeen thousand Yeerks died. The bulk of the invasion force. I really don't agree with Jake's decision to massacre so many people as a _distraction_ but that's what finally broke the Visser. Who knows if we could have pulled it off without that? I also wish that I could bring myself to care more than they died. It's a staggering number of lives and there must have been a few Aftrans or Illums among them but it really plays into that old saying about one being a tragedy and a million being a statistic. Rachel was a tragedy and those seventeen thousand Yeerks a statistic.

The rest of us survived this was physically but that was about it for Tobias and Jake. I still see Tobias on occasions – as does Toby – but the only healthy choice he's made since Rachel's death is the decision not to kill himself. He's living in a tree and spending most of his time drifting, pretending to be a normal hawk. It's a lot like that time he did the same thing way back at the beginning of the war before we even found Ax but this time I don't know if he'll ever snap out of it. By this point, Tobias has been a hawk for 6 years. Hawks live a lot shorter lives than humans and I'm really starting to wonder about whether he'll being a _nothlit_ again or allow himself to die a bird.

None of the others know where he is. He'd probably see Ax if he ever came back to Earth but who knows how he'd react to Jake? Tobias never even went to see his mother after the battle so she'll have to make do with whatever goodbye he gave her beforehand. I think that was a mistake, that this whole running away thing was a mistake but what can I do? Tobias insists that nobody understands and maybe I don't. If I push too hard then he could fly away forever and be even more beyond us.

Jake. I love Jake. Past, present, and probably future. There's no need to wonder if he had survivor's guilt. I could see it beginning to settle on him that day on the Pool Ship. Or maybe even earlier. He never was the same after the Yeerks had taken his parents. He kept going back over all the ways he had screwed up and led to this and it didn't matter that he'd saved so much and done the best he could with the information he had. He hadn't been perfect and he couldn't get past that.

I didn't know how to help him. I had tried after it first happened but I had my own parents to deal with and he wasn't the only one falling apart. Eventually, I had managed to make him step up to the plate and take charge again but it wasn't the same. Maybe I could have helped him more if it hadn't been for the incident with Tom and the morphing cube…I had made the right decision. That was what allowed us to win. That was what had forced Rachel to kill Tom and had allowed her to be killed in turn. If she had just been dealing with regular Hork-Bajir then the first time she took out her killer would have been enough.

Despite our problems, Jake had asked me to marry him that day before we had gone to see Arbron's Taxxons. I never used to be this cynical but I did wonder for awhile if he did that to distract me from figuring out what he was going to do with Rachel. It couldn't have been, though. This was before Tom had entered the picture with his offer, after all. I couldn't help but feel that Jake had turned into the kind of person who would have used that if he had to.

I wanted to say yes, you know. I almost did. But…I didn't know how much of Jake would survive this war. If he got through it and was Jake again then what did it matter if we got engaged then or in a year? We'd be together regardless. If not…well, it's not. Jake never called and there were only so many awkward phone conversations before I stopped, too.

Nothing makes me feel like a coward more than this situation with Jake does. He's alive physically but I don't know much else. According to Marco, that was basically it for awhile though since the trial he's been slowly dragging himself back to the land of the living. I _should_ know. Jake's a classic case of survivor's guilt but he doesn't want help or even truly recognize that he needs it.

I don't know whether I have it or not but I've been putting all of my energy into moving on since the moment Rachel's funeral ended. The war will always be a part of me but I meant it when I told Jake it wouldn't be my whole life. Maybe part of my humanitarian efforts are to try to make up for all the things that I've done but not everything. Not even most, I think.

Even now, three years later, this post-war life still seems so fragile somehow. Like one wrong move and I'll be back to those days when the war first ended and I can't do that. That's why I haven't done more to try and help Tobias and Jake, I suppose. You can't help those who don't want to be helped, I know, but I could have done more to try to convince them. I'm just afraid that if I get too close then I'll be dragged into their never-ending cycles of pain and misery and won't be able to find my way out again. If I want to move on – more than that, I _need_ to – then I can't let myself get caught up in that again. But oh, it feels like cowardice.

I'm actually happy. My parents may never truly understand what I did during the war but they don't condemn me for it. I'm nineteen and meeting with the President and making so many people's lives better. I have a wonderful boyfriend who has a little insecurity concerning Jake but who doesn't really have any baggage preventing him from loving me with everything he has for which I love all the more. Life, for me, is good.

From what I can see, it's good for Ax and Marco as well.

You can't spend three years on an alien planet slowly rejecting your own people's way of doing things while embracing an alien culture and expect to ever really be normal again but Ax is a hero now and in command of his own ship. He got to go home and see his parents and finally be out of his brother's shadow. I rarely see or hear from him but when I do, he seems content. Ax may have been as young as we were but unlike us he actually was in the military and did expect to someday fight Yeerks long before it happened which probably helped him in coping.

Marco's celebrity lifestyle is one that I would never want and doubt I'd be very good at. It just seems so…empty. Still, he saved the world so if he wants to spend the rest of his life enjoying the perks then I can't judge him too harshly. He also deflects most of the press so I don't have to deal with it, which is nice. Not to mention he's never wavered in his efforts to help Jake which is more than I can say. I may not understand it but if that truly makes him happy then it makes him happy. Marco's always been a survivor.

Part of me is jealous, I guess, that he can spend so much energy trying to save Jake without having to worry that he'll fail and be dragged under. Maybe one day I'll be on more even footing and be able to try to help but by then it may be too late. Either Marco will have succeeded or Jake will be too far gone.

I really should reach out anyway but every time I tell myself I'm going to, my cowardice (or is it self-preservation? It's so hard to tell the difference) rears its ugly head once again.

I'm moving on because I have to and keeping my distance to do it.

Review Please!


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